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<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide">\nOn the public bus, the round-faced girl was looking bashfully at Chu Yue. Her lips parted and closed a few times before she finally gathered the courage to speak to Chu Yue, “Um, miss, I… I’m also a student at Yancheng University, my name is Zhu Xixi.”\n
Chu Yue glanced over at her. Her first impression was that the girl appeared to be shy, but was actually rather brave; it wasn’t an easy feat to call out a molester like that in front of a crowd. She replied politely, “My name is Chu Yue.”\n
“I’m a first year computer science student, what about you?” Now that she had gotten a response, Zhu Xixi became a little more daring. She continued the conversation shyly.\n
“I’m taking philosophy, also a first year.”\n
“P-Philosophy?” Zhu Xixi’s eyes grew wide in surprise, “That’s a rare major… and the employment rate isn’t very high for graduates. Chu Yue, why did you choose philosophy as your major?”\n
“As the saying goes, science and philosophy started from arcane studies, so I picked this major. Um, I guess…” Chu Yue paused to think of the best way to put across her thoughts, and smiled as she continued, “It’s sort of related to my profession.”\n
“Ah?” Zhu Xixi was clearly confused, she didn’t understand Chu Yue’s words.\n
Someone nearby laughed mockingly, “You’re really stupid if you can’t even understand that, she’s playing with you.”\n
Zhu Xixi’s cheeks flushed red and she retorted weakly, “You’re not allowed to say that of her, Chu Yue is a great person, she helped me to deal with a pervert. She wouldn’t do that to me.”\n
The young man snorted in response, “She’s saying that she’s one of those supernatural scammers. Isn’t that playing with you? A profession that’s related to arcane studies, isn’t that like those con artists who jump around in their little rituals pretending to exorcise demons and ghosts?”\n
Zhu Xixi was trapped in a daze, she didn’t know how to react, because she didn’t expect that that was what Chu Yue had meant. However, Chu Yue seemed the complete opposite of an exorcist or con artist. From the way Chu Yue had stood up against that pervert earlier, Zhu Xixi felt that she seemed more like a mysterious martial arts practitioner.\n
“Studying the arcane isn’t related to those scammers at all. You could also call it metaphysics. All the phenomena that science can’t explain falls under metaphysics. Some even say that it’s not true that metaphysics is unscientific, but we are unable to properly observe and understand it at humanity’s current level of technology. Perhaps one day, when our technology has caught up, the arcane will simply be one of the sciences.”\n
Chu Yue didn’t get angry, and even explained her reasoning in a gentle young manner.\n
Modern humans were no longer as religious or superstitious as they were before. In order to spread the teachings of Xuandu Temple, she could no longer rely on the old traditional ways. Otherwise, she would end up just like her grandfather. He had slaved away his entire lifetime, yet Xuandu Temple was still broken down and poor. She was trying to cater to the modern world by coming up with a different explanation that the current society could accept.\n
The young man seated two rows in front of them wasn’t convinced, he sneered disdainfully, “You’re already a university student, how can you be this superstitious in your thinking? As nicely as you put it, metaphysics or arcane studies, or whatever, isn’t it still a bunch of mumbo jumbo and pretentious hand-waving? Only you women would believe in something so clearly fake. You got taken in so easily! From what I see, the standards of Yancheng University must have fallen.” \n
Zhu Xixi glared fiercely at the young man as her flush grew even deeper, she even started stammering from the force of her fury, “Hey, y-y-you’re too much! How can you be so…”\n
“What? I’m just speaking the truth!”\n
Xixi’s timid behaviour only seemed to make the young man chuckle even harder. He jeered at her, “Are you a little mouse? You can’t even speak up without stuttering? Why don’t you crawl into a corner and shut up?”\n
The round-faced girl wasn’t good at speaking in the first place, and she was more of an introvert. She was close to tears from the young man’s jeering, yet she was even more tongue-tied.\n
Chu Yue’s expression grew stiffer and stiffer. Although she always tried to stay calm and dignified as befitted a sect master, there was always someone who tried to make her break character. She sent a cold glare to the young man, “So what would qualify as a better standard? Maybe you can show off your own standards and school, so we can learn from you?”\n
The young man flushed red, then turned pale from her jab. He was a student from one of the nearby vocational schools. After noticing Chu Yue and Zhu Xixi’s school emblems, he felt uncomfortable.\n
He thought that they must have lucked out, getting born into a good family and getting the chance to go to school. Back in his old hometown, young women their age would have already been married off and become a sallow-faced slave to their husband and children. They wouldn’t be out here in the big city, looking down on him, as materialistic gold-digging female university students.\n
Chu Yue’s words struck the young man right where it hurt. His family had forced his sisters to start working early so they could support him financially in his studies, yet he had only managed to enter an obscure vocational school. The young man never thought to reflect on his own issues, and simply placed the blame on an unfair society. It was women like Zhu Xixi and Chu Yue who had taken up his spot in a more prestigious university. Women were just tools for childbirth, wasn’t it a waste to let them go to university?\n
The young man channeled his shame into anger, “What? You couldn’t beat me in an argument so you start throwing out personal attacks? So that’s what you Yancheng University students do? No matter what, I’m still stronger than you. You’re just a woman, as much as you study, you’re just going to marry a man and have kids anyway. You women are just stupid and vain, you probably just memorised the mock exam questions to get into Yancheng University. Look at how easy it was for her to brainwash you, you just believed whatever mystical nonsense she told you. I bet you’ve already forgotten all the years of Marxism you’ve learned. What a waste of society’s resources!”\n
Chu Yue looked straight at him with a cold frown. The young man met her gaze and found that her black pupils seemed darker than most, to the point that it was almost abnormal. A deep, dark abyss seemed to dwell in her eyes, like a portal to hell. Just a single glance was enough to make the young man feel like he had fallen into an icy pool, his body felt entirely frozen.\n
She sneered icily, “I hope you’ll never have to seek help from the arcane side for as long as you live. Someone like you, will only be met with closed doors when you really need help.”\n
“Xixi, let’s get down here.”\n
“Um, ah? Wait for me, Chu Yue!” Zhu Xixi followed Chu Yue off the bus, her admiration and respect clear as day on her face.\n
Back on the bus, once Chu Yue had left, that invisible pressure lifted. The young man could finally breathe again. He held onto the back of the seat in front of him with an ugly grimace. Just as he was about to swear at the women again to let off some of the fear in his heart, a sudden chill shot up from his ankles straight into his stomach. His knees buckled and he knelt to the ground as waves of pain washed over him and cold sweat gathered on his forehead.\n
“What’s wrong, boy?”\n
While the other passengers didn’t have a very good impression of the young man after listening to the quarrel between the three of them, they didn’t want anything to happen to him while he was still on board the bus. They crowded around him in concern.\n
“I… I’m fine,” The young man just found it strange. He hardly got sick, why would he get a stomachache out of nowhere?\n
“Are you sure?” The passengers around him seemed sceptical of his answer, since he looked like he was about to have a heart attack just now.\n
The young man shook his head. That intense pain had gone as suddenly as it had come, it was downright ungodly. While his stomach wasn’t hurting anymore, it seemed like his abdomen had gotten a little bigger than before, it almost looked… round.\n
An old man who seemed to be in the know shook his head and sighed, “Boy, you’ve offended someone you shouldn’t have. Even if you don’t believe in it, you shouldn’t show disrespect.”\n
The young man was shocked and dazed. After experiencing the phantom pain and thinking back to the parting words of that strange woman, he was greatly unsettled, and wasn’t as arrogant as he was before.\n
In the back of the bus, someone who had witnessed the entire incident quickly halted the bus before it started again, and ran off in the direction that Chu Yue had gone.\n
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